AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand why Enlightenment ideas of liberty and equality were often universal in theory but limited in practice
- Identify how women participated in Enlightenment culture through salons while remaining excluded from formal political rights
- Explain why Rousseau is a key example of Enlightenment gender exclusion
- Recall the significance of **1762**, **1791**, and **1792** for this topic
- Compare the arguments of **Olympe de Gouges** and **Mary Wollstonecraft**
- Connect Enlightenment-era exclusions to the French Revolution’s treatment of women
- Use this topic in AP European History SAQ, DBQ, and LEQ responses with clear comparison and causation

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand how Enlightenment thought reshaped ideas about rights and society while often excluding women, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that Enlightenment thinkers promoted reason, natural rights, liberty, and equality, but often applied these ideas mainly to men
- Identify the role of **salons** and **salonnières** in spreading Enlightenment ideas without granting women formal political equality
- Explain why **Jean-Jacques Rousseau** is important as an example of a thinker who limited women to domestic roles
- Understand that the **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)** did not grant women equal political citizenship
- Identify **Olympe de Gouges** and her **Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791)** as a direct critique of male-only rights
- Identify **Mary Wollstonecraft** and **A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)** as an early feminist use of Enlightenment ideas
- Explain the distinction between women’s cultural influence and women’s legal or political rights
- Connect Enlightenment exclusions to continuity during the French Revolution, including the denial of the vote to women

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why can the Enlightenment be described as both egalitarian and exclusionary?
2. How did women participate in Enlightenment culture without gaining equal citizenship?
3. Why is Rousseau often used as evidence for the limits of Enlightenment equality?
4. How did Olympe de Gouges challenge the claims of the **1789** Declaration of the Rights of Man?
5. What did Mary Wollstonecraft argue caused women’s apparent inferiority?

## Introduction

The Enlightenment is often remembered as the age of reason, liberty, and natural rights. That description is correct, but incomplete. Many Enlightenment thinkers argued that human beings possessed rights by nature and that society should be judged by reason rather than tradition. Yet those same ideas were often applied narrowly. In practice, many writers meant **men**, especially educated or propertied men, when they used language that sounded universal.

This tension matters for AP European History because it shows a major contradiction inside Unit 4. The Enlightenment weakened old authority and widened debate about freedom, but it did not automatically create gender equality. Women helped spread Enlightenment culture, especially in France, but they were usually denied full education, political citizenship, and formal power. Some women and some later writers then used Enlightenment logic itself to expose this gap.

> **Key Term: Enlightenment**
> An intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that emphasized reason, criticism of tradition, and debate about government, society, and human rights.

### Universal rights in theory, male rights in practice

Enlightenment thought built on the Scientific Revolution and on earlier political philosophy, especially the language of natural rights. Thinkers such as **John Locke** argued that people possessed rights by nature, not because rulers granted them. That was a major shift away from older systems based on inherited privilege, monarchy, and tradition.

> **Key Term: natural rights**
> Rights believed to belong to human beings by nature, rather than being granted by kings, governments, or churches.

This language sounded broad. If rights are natural, they should apply to all humans. That is the logical force of the idea. But many Enlightenment thinkers did not follow that logic all the way. They often treated women as exceptions. Women were commonly seen as belonging mainly to the household, not the public sphere. So a theory that attacked inherited privilege still preserved gender hierarchy.

This is one of the most useful distinctions for the exam: the Enlightenment challenged some inequalities far more strongly than others. It criticized censorship, arbitrary rule, and religious intolerance. It was less willing to question male authority inside family and politics.

A good comparison is between attacks on estate privilege and silence on women’s citizenship. During the French Revolution, the **Third Estate** could claim political rights by saying privilege should not belong only to clergy and nobility. Women, however, found that the same rights language stopped short at gender. So the issue was not that equality disappeared; it was that equality was selective.

Students often miss the difference between abstract language and actual application. “All men are born free” sounded sweeping, but in eighteenth-century usage it was often interpreted literally and socially, not as modern universal human equality.

> **Key Term: universal rights**
> The claim that rights belong to all people, though in the Enlightenment this was often stated more broadly than it was applied.
>
> **Test Tip:** In an SAQ or LEQ, do not just say “the Enlightenment supported equality.” Add a qualifying phrase such as “for men more than women” or “in theory more than in practice” to show complexity.

Rousseau is the strongest single example of this contradiction. He could be radical in criticizing society and defending popular sovereignty, yet restrictive on women. In **Émile (1762)**, his discussion of female education presented women as shaped for different purposes from men. He treated women’s education as relative to men: pleasing them, helping them, and supporting domestic life. That means Rousseau is not good evidence for gender equality. He is good evidence for the limits of Enlightenment equality.

This matters because Rousseau is often mistaken for a straightforward champion of equality. He was one for political community among men, but not for women’s equal public citizenship. That distinction is exam gold.

### Women in salons: influence without equality

Women were not absent from the Enlightenment. In fact, they were highly visible in one major part of its culture: the salon. Salons were elite gatherings, especially in **Paris**, where writers, philosophes, nobles, and officials discussed literature, politics, religion, and science. Many of these meetings were hosted by women.

> **Key Term: salons**
> Elite social gatherings, especially in eighteenth-century France, where intellectuals discussed literature, politics, science, and philosophy.
>
> **Key Term: salonnières**
> Elite women who hosted salons and helped spread Enlightenment ideas through social and cultural influence.

Salonnières mattered because they helped create the networks through which Enlightenment ideas moved. The Enlightenment was not spread only by books. It also spread through conversation, patronage, and personal connection. Women such as **Madame Geoffrin**, **Madame du Deffand**, and **Julie de Lespinasse** helped bring writers and influential readers together. They could shape who met whom, who gained protection, and which ideas circulated.

That is real influence, but it was not equal power. This is the key distinction. Hosting a salon did not mean voting, holding office, writing laws, or being accepted as a political citizen. Women could shape debate informally while remaining excluded formally.

This tension is why salons are so useful in an essay. They let you qualify any simplistic claim. If a prompt asks whether the Enlightenment expanded opportunity for women, you can say yes in cultural life, but no in legal and political equality. That is stronger than saying simply yes or no.

Another important limit is class. Salons were elite spaces. Most women did not enter them. They were not democratic institutions. They reflected the wealth and education of aristocratic or upper-class women. So even where women participated, participation was narrow.

The case of the **Encyclopédie** also shows this limit. Women helped the Enlightenment circulate, and powerful women could help protect writers from censorship. Yet the great encyclopedia project itself gave little serious attention to women’s condition. That reveals the pattern clearly: women were useful to the movement, but the movement often did not treat women’s equality as a central issue.

Montesquieu offers a partial contrast to Rousseau. In **Persian Letters**, he criticized oppressive gender arrangements indirectly, for example through discussion of the harem. But even that did not amount to a full modern feminist program. It shows sympathy, not equality.

> **Test Tip:** If a question mentions women and the Enlightenment, avoid saying salons “gave women equality.” Better wording: “salons gave some elite women cultural influence, but not equal citizenship.”

### Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, and the feminist critique of Enlightenment limits

The clearest feminist responses to Enlightenment exclusion came at the end of the eighteenth century, especially during and just after the French Revolution. These responses did not reject Enlightenment ideals. Instead, they used them more consistently than many male philosophes had done.

Rousseau helps set up this contrast. In **Émile (1762)**, he argued for different education and different roles for men and women. Men were prepared for citizenship and independence. Women were prepared for modesty, obedience, and domestic usefulness. His argument rested on “natural” sexual difference, but its political effect was straightforward: women were kept outside full public life.

Mary Wollstonecraft answered that kind of thinking directly. In **A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)**, she argued that women were not naturally inferior to men. Their apparent inferiority came from poor education and social conditioning. This is a powerful Enlightenment argument because it rests on reason and human capacity, not custom.

> **Key Term: early feminism**
> Early arguments for expanding women’s civil, educational, and political rights, often using the language of reason and natural rights.

Wollstonecraft’s reasoning works step by step:

1. Enlightenment thinkers claim reason is the basis of virtue and citizenship.
2. Women also possess reason.
3. Therefore women must be educated as rational beings.
4. If women seem weak or ornamental, that is caused by upbringing, not nature.

That makes Wollstonecraft such strong AP evidence. She did not stand outside the Enlightenment; she pushed its logic further. She exposed the contradiction between praising reason universally and denying women the education needed to develop it.

Olympe de Gouges did something similar in revolutionary France. In **1791**, she wrote the **Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen**, a direct reply to the **1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen**. Her strategy was brilliant: she mirrored the language and structure of the revolutionary declaration to reveal that supposedly universal rights were actually male rights.

> **Key Term: Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen**
> Olympe de Gouges’s 1791 response to the 1789 Declaration, arguing that women should enjoy the same natural and political rights as men.

De Gouges argued that if women paid taxes, suffered punishment, and shared social burdens, they should also share rights, offices, and public honors. This is classic Enlightenment reasoning joined to revolutionary citizenship. Duties and rights should match. If the state claims women as subjects, it cannot deny them as citizens without contradiction.

These arguments also show continuity and change across periods. The Enlightenment opened the language of rights. The French Revolution made that language politically urgent. Women then used both to criticize exclusion. But the revolutionary state largely refused full equality. Women did gain some civil reforms in France, including **divorce legalized in 1792** and some inheritance changes, but not equal political rights. By **1793**, women were even banned from political clubs.

This is a common AP distinction: women gained some civil rights, not full political citizenship. Students lose accuracy when they treat all reform as the vote. Keep the categories separate.

### From Enlightenment ideals to revolutionary exclusions

The French Revolution is where the limits of Enlightenment equality became impossible to miss. The **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)** used sweeping rights language: liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. It attacked privilege and announced equality before the law. But it did not include women as full political citizens.

In the early revolutionary constitution of **1791**, voting and full participation were restricted to male citizens meeting property or tax qualifications. Women had no franchise. Later, the republic expanded political rights to men more broadly, yet not to women. So even when revolutionaries became more democratic toward class, they did not become democratic toward gender.

That is why the subtopic is so important. Exclusion of women during the Revolution was not a surprise break from Enlightenment thinking. It was partly a continuation of assumptions already present in it. The Revolution adopted Enlightenment rights language but often preserved the same gender boundary.

There is also a useful wider comparison. Revolutionary France extended rights more successfully to some religious minorities than to women. Protestants and Jews were increasingly accepted as political citizens by **1791**. The line excluding women proved harder to cross. That contrast helps show that “rights” were debated case by case, not granted automatically to everyone.

Another comparison is with slavery. Revolutionary France struggled over whether rights should extend to enslaved people in the colonies. Economic interests made that issue explosive. In **1794**, slavery was abolished in French colonies, after revolt and pressure from events in **Saint-Domingue**. Yet women still lacked full political equality. So gender exclusion remained one of the strongest continuities.

For AP writing, this subtopic works especially well for causation and qualification. You can argue that the Enlightenment created the language later used by feminists, but also that many Enlightenment thinkers themselves defended separate spheres and male citizenship. That is both continuity and challenge in one line of argument.

A concise thesis model would be: Enlightenment ideas expanded criticism of inherited privilege and promoted natural rights, but equality was usually defined in male terms; women gained cultural influence through salons and mounted powerful critiques through de Gouges and Wollstonecraft, yet remained excluded from full political citizenship.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Enlightenment promoted reason, liberty, and natural rights, but often applied them mainly to men
- Enlightenment equality was broad in language but selective in practice
- Women played an important role in spreading ideas through salons and salonnières
- Salons gave some elite women cultural influence, not equal political rights
- Rousseau is key evidence for the gender limits of Enlightenment thought
- In **Émile (1762)**, Rousseau argued for separate roles and unequal education for women
- The **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)** did not grant women equal citizenship
- **Olympe de Gouges** answered this exclusion with the **Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791)**
- **Mary Wollstonecraft** argued in **A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)** that women were denied equality by poor education and social conditioning
- The French Revolution gave women some civil reforms, such as divorce in **1792**, but not full political equality
- By **1793**, women were banned from political clubs in revolutionary France
- For AP essays, the best argument stresses the tension between universal theory and male-centered practice

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Enlightenment
- natural rights
- universal rights
- salons
- salonnières
- early feminism
- Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen


The Enlightenment - Enlightenment equality often excluded women